xp_logs | Angelo and Jane (Reply)

He shows her the lake and tells her a bit about himself.

In a break between classes, Angelo made his way along to Amanda's dorm to check how she was doing. He pushed the door open carefully and looked around it, not wanting to make her headache worse with noise.

Jane was floating around the room, just kind of drifting in thought. Today was quite a day for her, a day of yet more firsts, what with offically starting classes and all. Thinking in cloud-form helped her put things in perspective. Plus, Amanda was finally sleeping, knocked out with pain pills. Hopefully, her headache would be gone when she woke up. Jane heard a click and saw Angelo slowly push open the door and peer inside. She floated over to him and quickly coalesced into her human form. He was probably startled to see her suddenly in front of him, but she put a put a finger to his lips to make sure he didn't make any noise. She pushed him outside and closed the door gently behind them. "Hi Angelo!" she whispered.

Angelo blinked, letting her push him outside while trying not to stare at her - or even look at her, really. "Hi Jane. Um... did you forget about the clothes thing again?"

"Er. Well, yes, but only because I didn't want you to wake Amanda up! She's sick and she just got to sleep and she needs sleep to make her well, so. Yeah. Anyway. So, what's up?" she asked brightly, deciding to ignore his discomfort for the moment.

"Just came to check on Amanda. She's sleepin', you said? Good."

"Yes. She's had it rough. She told me a spell she tried went wrong. Sucks. If you are very quiet, you can come in and see her while I get dressed."

Angelo nodded. "Okay. I promise to be quiet."

Jane pushed open the door again and crept inside, wincing at each creak of the floorboards. It was a lot easier to be quiet when she was a cloud! She gestured Angelo over towards where Amanda was sleeping and went over to her bed to put on the clothes laide out on it.

Angelo walked slowly and carefully over towards Amanda's bed, trying to tread as lightly as he could. As Jane had said, she seemed to be sleeping peacefully for once, and he twitched the ruffled blankets back into place with a smile.

Jane finished getting ready and grabbed up her notebook and a pen, then tip-toed back to the door. She waited for Angelo to join her.

Angelo glanced up, seeing Jane was ready to go, and made his way carefully over there. "Where d'you wanna go?" he asked quietly.

Jane shrugged. "I don't know. Are you going anywhere in particular?"

"Not 'specially. Got a study period for another half-hour, 45 minutes or so."

"Well..." She hesitated. "Would you mind terribly showing me around the outside of this place? If you need to study or something or if you don't want to, that's fine, but I only got a quick glimpse outside on my first evening here and it looked pretty."

Angelo grinned. "No problem. The grounds it is, just a quick tour."

"Thank you!"

He just smiled and led her outside. "Where d'you wanna see first?"

"I don't know! What is there to see?" She smiled at him hopefully.

Angelo thought. "Uh, well, there's the lake, and the woods. There's a quarry, too, but it's probably not too safe back there."

"Well then, show me the lake or the woods -- whichever you like better."

"The lake, first", he decided. "Maybe the woods later, if we have time."

"Greatness! Do you go swimming in the lake? I mean, when it's not so cold? Are there fish?"

Angelo blinked. "Well, I'm sure we could go swimmin', yeah. Not sure about fish."

"I don't think we have time to go swimming now," Jane said solemnly. "And anyway, I don't know if I know how to." She paused and sighed. "I say things like that a lot, eh? I don't know what I've done, I don't know where I've been. It's frustrating!"

Angelo nodded. "You'll figure out what you can an' can't do soon enough. An', no, we don't have time. Anyway, it isn't warm enough yet."

"Yeah, I guess it's too cold. As for figuring out what I can and can't do... I don't want to just know that I can do something, I want to remember how I learned to do it in the first place! Doc Samson says that I could remember my past tomorrow or that it could never come back. I wish there was some way I could find out who I was before I became Jane Doe #31."

Angelo frowned. "Well, someone out there has t'know. You didn't fall from the sky."

"Yes, but how do I find the someone who knows? It's not like I can go up to every single person in the world and say 'Hi, do you happen to know who I am?' or anything." Jane kicked a stone dejectedly. She should probably just resign herself to never knowing. She had actually been starting to do just that back at the mental institution, but now she couldn't somehow. She had been stullifying there, really, but here there were all sorts of possibilities. Here, there was hope. But probably none for her memories.

"Have they tried puttin' notices in the papers an' stuff? Startin' where they found you an' workin' out, or somethin'?"

Angelo asked, knowing they probably had, but figuring it was worth asking.

She nodded. "Yeah, the police put up pictures of me all around Norbrook and sent my picture to some national database or something, but no one came forward and there were no matches. They stopped trying after awhile. If Doc Samson hadn't brought me here, I would have probably spent the rest of my life in the institution -- or out on the streets if the budget got cut -- without knowing who I was. But here, well, here I get to be normal, you know? I'm among other people with powers, but I'm still the only one without a past." She hated whining like this, but it was nice to talk about her feelings. She should stop now, though. She didn't want to make Angelo bored with her insecurities or anything. "Sorry, it's okay, I'll stop now. So, um, so how are you doing today? How's your friend, Bobby? I read your post about him. You were worried. Is he okay?"

Angelo frowned. "He's... better. I think. Kinda."

"That's good! Even kinda better is good." She smiled and patted Angelo's arm. "Don't worry, with a friend like you, I'm sure he'll be in top form in no time. But what about you? You're always worried about other people like Bobby and Amanda, but how are you doing, Angelo?"

Angelo shrugged. "I'm okay, really. For now at least."

Jane thought for a moment. 'I'm fine' or 'I'm okay' had always been a sort of code at the institution for 'I'm really all fucked in the head right now, but I don't want to talk about it with you, just keep an eye on me in case I do anything even more crazy.' Did that still apply here? Maybe it was different here, maybe he really was 'okay.' Well, she'd just have to wait and watch, wouldn't she? "That's good. If you're ever not okay, you'll let me help you out, right?"

Angelo nodded with a smile. "Sure. It does happen, from time to time."

"Not being okay? I think that happens to everyone. Actually, where I was before being here, almost everyone was in a state of not okay." It was a bit like that here, too, she thought, only here everyone pretended that they were okay. She wasn't up on everything going on around here yet, but she did sense undercurrents to the interactions that people had. Maybe she was just overly sensitized from being around disturbed people all the time and was seeing shadows, but she didn't think so. Something was bothering Angelo, but if he didn't want to talk about it, she wouldn't push.

Angelo nodded. "Yeah, you said. Must've been hard."

She shook her head. "Not really. I mean, I didn't know anything different, right? Doc Samson had to tell me that being not okay wasn't the right way to be. He said I was pretty okay and shouldn't be there. I think he was right. It was like... I wanted to fit in, you know, so I had to be not okay, too? And, memory problems aside, I'm not actually crazy." She grinned at him saucily. "Well, alright, not too crazy."

Angelo chuckled as they reached the lake. "Well, don't worry too much about fittin' in here, okay? It's kinda hard not to."

"Considering the wide spectrum of powers and personalities here? Yeah, I'm not worried." Well, she was a little worried, but she didn't need to burden him with that. She was just being silly and neurotic anyway. Jane looked out across the lake. "It's beautiful."

Angelo followed her gaze. "Yeah, it really is. I'd never seen anythin' like this before I came here - spent my whole life in the city, an' in one pretty small part of the city, at that."

"Do you like it here? Better than the city, I mean?"

Angelo shrugged. "Hard t' say. It wasn't exactly my choice to leave, but once I manifested... yeah. Here's better than there."

"It wasn't your choice to come here? Did you want to stay where you were?" Jane was genuinely curious about her new friend, and about his life before coming here.

Another shrug, a little uncomfortable this time. "Before I manifested, yeah, I did. I didn't know anythin' else. After, no."

That was his 'I'm okay' voice, and Jane rather suspected that she was right about his version being the same as the one she'd known at the institution. "What happened?"

He turned to look at her, face blank. "Let's just say... I didn't have as good of friends as I thought I did."

"They didn't react well when you manifested," she guessed.

He laughed bitterly. "That's right, yeah. Made it more than clear they didn't want me around, so I ran. God knows what they'd've done if they'd seen me again, what they did the first time was bad enough."

Jane put an arm around him and gave him a quick, sideways hug. "Did they call you names?"

Angelo blinked, suddenly reminded how innocent she was, for all she was older than him. "Yeah. That's right. An' the rest."

"They beat you up, too, didn't they," she said quietly. It hurt to think about how mean people could be sometimes.

He managed another bitter laugh, before telling her the whole truth. "Yep. Beat me up an' left me to die", he drawled, trying for an ironic tone in an attempt to lessen the harshness of it.

"Oh, Angelo!" Jane threw her arms around him and gave him a full hug this time. "I'm so sorry, nobody should have that happen to them!" She pulled back a bit and looked him straight in the eyes. "But you have real friends here, now. I'm your friend and I'd never do anything like that to you, not even if I found out that you were a- a- an alien or something!" She sniffled and went back to hugging him.

Angelo blinked, startled by her insistence when they'd only met twice, then smiled and gave her a quick hug in return. "Thanks. But I made it out, y'know? It's okay."

'It's okay' was just like 'I'm okay,' but she'd let it pass, for now. "I'm glad you made it out. You're a great person."

Angelo managed a would-be reassuring smile. "Thanks. Good to hear."

"Yes, it is good to hear. So I shall tell you that every day." She smiled at him.

He smiled back, more genuinely. "You're not so bad yourself."

She giggled. "I'm glad you think so."

Angelo glanced at his watch, and his eyes widened. "We'd better be headin' back inside. Almost time for class."

"Oops, yeah, I guess so. I don't want to make a bad impression on my first day as a regular student! Thank you for showing me the lake, Angelo, and thank you for showing me yourself, too."

Angelo nodded. "No problem. We can talk again whenever you want."

"Ditto." She hooked her an arm through his and they started walking back to the mansion.